


an ultralight beam

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Minor Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Near Future, Reconciliation, Sad Kent Parson, Suicide Attempt, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 15:48:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: In 2019,two strangers, a decade older and maybe a little wiser, meet again for a long overdue conversation.





	an ultralight beam

“What happened the night after the draft, in 2009?” 

Jack practically chugged out of his paper coffee cup, relished the feeling of the hot liquid burning the inside of his cheeks simply because it was something other than the hot and prickly sensation that was burning up his cheeks. He dug his feet into the carpet.

They were at a Tim Horton’s, picked arbitrarily from the probable dozens that dotted Quebec. 

It certainly wasn’t the one that he and Kent had gone to as teens on a rare weekend free from cross-training or massive parties. Jack would remember that interior for the rest of his life. The two of them would road trip down into Quebec, together, after meeting up at their rink. Jack would always drive, strictly adhering to the speed limit in a way that Kent had once described as “anal-fucking-retentive, no pun intended.” Kent, who had never learned (or been given the opportunity to learn) how drive would spend hours crafting the perfect playlist on his iPod. They’d spend the rest of their day sipping over-sweetened coffee and doing “homework.” Most of the “homework” they did consist of emailing their families - Jack, his parents, and Kent, his sisters or goofing around. Jack sometimes scrolled through internet chat boards. Sometimes they would be about World War II, sometimes they were about new books that were starting to generate some buzz, but they weren’t every about hockey. 

They had always relished those afternoons. Kent’s face would always light up at the mere suggestion that they were on a real date, something that would have never been possible when they were back in the Q. Even Jack, who never let his mind as a teen stray too far from his ultimate focus of hockey - at least not outwardly, found the memories idyllic. It was a chance to exist without the constant need to look over their shoulders. 

“You know what happened. Everyone knows what happened.” Jack said, mouth still burning. It’s not a lie, not really, but Jack knows it’s an omission. 

Kent, who was looking uncharacteristically reserved, scowled from beneath the brim of his University of Michigan hat. Jack remembered hearing something about Kent attending the championship NCAA game the past year. Samwell had just narrowly missed the Frozen Four.    
  
Jack tried to imagine what Kent would have been like if he had gone to college. Kent always hated school, the structure and the commitment of doing something that didn’t truly challenge him. Kent might have liked the atmosphere of college. He would have liked to study what he wanted to learn and really only what he wanted to learn. He might have been wrapped up with the party scene, though. Jack can picture two Kents easily: fifteen-year-old Kent, still a head shorter than the rest of the boys on their team, and twenty-one-year-old Kent, snapback put on backward and Rolex on his wrist. Both of them had an overflowing cup and an expression that had a knack for looking like he was having a blast and the most miserable experience of his life. 

Kent’s scowl only deepened. “Yeah, but I want to hear it from you, Jack. I always fucking deserved to know what happened to you, from you. I deserved to know what happened to my--” 

Kent clasped his mouth shut. The sound was so loud that Jack could audibly hear the snapping of his teeth. What were they to each other? It was still a question that seemed to be unanswered nearly a decade later. 

“Everyone always wanted to know if I really wanted to die.” Jack paused and took another sip of his coffee. It wasn’t as scalding hot as it was the first time, but somehow this felt comforting. A double-double from Tim Horton’s felt like home. It felt like being on a break in between semesters. It felt like the treats after a big win, a time-honored Zimmermann father-son tradition. It gave a little courage to keep talking about the worst day of his life.    
  
“I don’t, I don’t think that I did. I just didn’t want to live my life anymore. Going second in the draft, it just confirmed my fears. It felt like everything that I ever worried about - not living up to my dad’s legacy, never living up to everyone’s expectations, not being the  _ generational  _ talent that everyone told me that I had to be - was coming true. I saw the look of disappointment on my father’s face when they called your name.”    
  
Kent looks hurt and annoyed at the same time. Jack winces. Saying that out loud, to Kent, for the first time gave him a glimpse into what Kent might have been feeling all of those years. He could see how it could be construed, and he can’t contain himself from blurting out.    
  
“Did you blame yourself for what happened, Kenny?” 

Kent’s eyes, ever-shifting in color, light up with a sense of urgency and relief. He leaned back in his chair, however, retreating into himself. He pulled off his cap, too, pulling it down lower on his head. His coffee, iced, remained untouched. 

“Of course, I blamed myself, Jack.” Kent deadpanned as if it was the most logical thing in the world. “It seemed pretty fucking straightforward, bro. I took your spot in the draft, and less than six hours later, you tried to kill yourself.” 

“I didn’t  _ try  _ to kill myself, and it wasn’t your fault.” Jack’s voice was softer than it had been all morning. “It was correlation, but not causation.” 

Kent smiled and took an overtly-aggressive sip of his iced coffee. Half the plastic cup was nearly gone with one loud slurp. “I guess once a nerd, always a nerd. Am I right, Zimms?:    
  
Jack smiled, despite himself. “Did you just chirp me?”   
  
“I do have a sense of humor, Jack. I don’t sit around my house all day and angst. Nor do I think of the perfect math references to bring up at my touchy-feely conversations.”   
  
“Yeah, I guess you have to leave the house to take pictures of your cat on the Vegas Strip, eh?” Jack was chuckling. The cumulative thought that he was teasing Kent about his cat’s Instagram in a random Tim Horton’s on a Tuesday afternoon made him laugh harder.    
  
Kent finished his coffee. The ice cubes raddled loudly in their cup, and Kent ended the drink with an obnoxious smack of his lips. A mother, who had to roughly be about their age, glared at him as she tried to wrangle three pee-wee hockey players into the bathroom. 

“You laugh,” Kent pushes, “but I think your boyfriend follows my cat’s page. So who is the real winner here?”

There is a well of guilt that washes over Jack. It was the strange and pressing realization that it didn’t have to be the way it was so for so long between them. They could have been friends, best friends. Or at least, they didn’t have to be so wrapped up in the idea that their love fell apart so much that they hated each other.    
  
“I’m sorry, Kent.” Jack put his hand out on the table. Kent didn’t take, and he didn’t expect him to. But it felt like a meaningful gesture. “I am sorry if I ever gave you the impression that I nearly died because of you.”    
  
Jack co ntinued.  
  
His face started to burn again, and he couldn’t quite place the emotion as to why. “I just wanted to sleep. I had been drinking earlier that day, with you and with my parents and with everyone. I came home, and I wanted to just go to bed. But there were all these thoughts, in my head, thoughts that I couldn’t stop. So I took one pill, and then it didn’t work. I was still anxious and on edge. So then I got up and took two more. And that didn’t work. And then the last thing that I remembered was feeling myself laying on the bathroom floor and hearing the sound of the pill bottle falling. I woke up in the hospital after a three-day coma to my mom crying and my dad telling me that the hotel cleaning lady found me asphyxiating in my own vomit. ”   
  
There are tears in Kent’s eyes, and Jack blinks. He felt the sting of his own. He didn’t expect to be this emotional about it. He’s recounted this story more than once. To his therapist, to Shitty, to Lardo, to Bitty, to George, to some of his teammates, a handful of others; it felt strange to recount it to someone who lived through it. 

“Why did you stop talking to me?” Kent asked, earnestly. 

“I was embarrassed.” Jack shrugged. It felt like a lame response, but it was the truth. “I was embarrassed I nearly died in a puddle of my own puke, which was really fucking gross. I was embarrassed because there were times I thought the world really was better off without me. I just knew that you were better off without me, and I knew that it would be easier for me to forget rather than actually unpack what happened..”    
  
Kent put both of his hands on the table. He started drumming with his fingers softly. “You made a fucking decision without me, Jack. You did what was easiest, the most minimal amount of work for you, under the guise of doing what was best for me. That wasn’t fair.”   
  
“It wasn’t and I’m sorry.” 

Kent looked stricken and relieved all at the same time. So many years of waiting to hear that, and it finally happened. A tear started to roll down his face. Kent quickly wiped it away with his hand.    
  


“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry for showing up at your school, and I am sorry for shit talking your friends to your face. They seemed liked cool people when I met them. They were all clearly fucking smart as shit and talented too.”   
  


“Why you’d keep coming to Samwell?” It was Jack’s turn to question now. He finished the rest of his coffee, first. It was lukewarm, and the sugar granules pooled at the bottom of the cup. It nearly made the last gulp undrinkable. Jack finished it anyway.    
  
“I had a very specific way I wanted my life to go, Jack,” breathed Kent. “I had a damn ten-year plan, and then someone put a fucking wrench in it. And I thought I could just fucking fix it. All by myself. I thought that if I just went and talked to you and saw you; I could fix all of your problems. And if I fixed your problems, I fixed mine.”   
  
“It wasn’t fair for you to assume that I had a problem or that I was making a mistake because I didn’t live out the life you imagined for me.” Jack furrowed his brow. “I’m glad I went to Samwell. The people I met there saved my life.” 

Kent reached up suddenly and flipped his hat backward. He scratched at his scalp, behind his year. A stray strand of blond hair came loose. Jack had the strange urge to push it back under his cap. 

“I’m sorry.” Kent looked more vulnerable now that the brim had been moved from his eyes. “I am sorry for trying to manipulate you into doing what I wanted. It was weird and shitty for me to just show up at your school, invade your space, and just expect you to welcome me with open arms. It was inappropriate to think that I could make decisions for your life better than you could. I realized, for a few years actually, that’s a really shitty and toxic thing for me to do.” 

“Well, we all did toxic things.” Jack shrugged. “It was manipulative for me to say that I didn't love you when I did.”    
  
Kent practically shot up. His posture immediately straightened. He pushed his shoulders back, and Jack could notice the muscles that flexed underneath his t-shirt. Even now, it was strange to remember and painfully obvious that the two of them were in their late twenties rather than their early teens.    
  
“You loved me?” The shock in Kent’s voice is kind of painful to Jack. It was hard to hear so much eagerness and so much doubt. There was never anything like that with Bitty. He had always expressed how much he loved Bitty and was always so excited to hear the same in return. He didn’t really think about what it meant to Kent for Jack to withhold just three words from him.    
  
“Of course, I did, Kenny.” Jack grasped onto Kent’s and gave it a reassuring squeeze. It felt like something his mother would have done, and Jack was firmly in the stage of life where he viewed acting like his mom as a positive thing. “I just never wanted to admit it to myself, and because of that, I could never admit it to you.”

Kent smiled softly. “I loved you too, in my own way, It wasn’t always great between us, but it was always good. And if I had the chance to go through it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat. You are in some of my best memories, Jack.”

Jack’s phone started to vibrate. A picture of him and Alicia popped up on the screen. It was the two of them on center ice at Faber. Her dress was smoothed and her alumni pin prominently displayed in comparison to his crumbled gown and crooked hat. Yet somehow that moment, graduation, felt much more significant than any other.    
  
Jack looked at the phone and then back at Kent. “I can answer that later.”    
  
Kent offered a broader but watery smile. He squeezed Jack’s, and then switched his hat back. He pulled the brim low, pulled down his t-shirt, and stood up. “I should go. Long flight back home tomorrow. I need to pack.”    
  
“Still bring sixteen different suits to every away game?”   
  
“I like to have options,” Kent pushed his chair back in. “Besides, you could learn something. You outta let Bittle or that shit kid teach you how to dress. Don’t think I haven’t seen your ugly ass travel suits.”    
  
“If Shitty taught me how to dress, I’d be half naked most of the time.”   
  
“Would that be the worst thing in the world?”   
  
The two of them laugh. The world felt a little bit lighter.    
  
“This was good Kenny,” Jack saw his phone blink as his mother’s call went voicemail. He’d have to call her back in a few minutes. She still panicked when he didn’t return his calls for long. But after what happened nearly a decade ago, who could blame her?   
  
“We should do it again. Let me know when you’re in Vegas.” Kent snagged their trash off the table and turned toward the exit. “Catch you on the flip side, Zimms,”

  
The ending was abrupt, and Jack didn't expect to be left alone in a Tim Horton's. He didn't expect to feel like the hard work of becoming friends again was just starting. He didn't expect to feel more relieved than he ever had in his life. The meeting wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> dark!ngozi, give me the pimms reconciliation and friendship i need and deserve. 
> 
> also would kill for some timbits. i can’t wait to have them on the semester break. 
> 
> as always: @preppypotato on tumblr.


End file.
